Title
Banatao, Dado (Diosdado) oral historyCatalog Number
102746746Type
DocumentDescription
Dado Banatao was born into a poor family in the Philippines. His father was a farmer and his mother a housekeeper. He excelled in school and was able to attend Mapua Institute of Technology, from which he received a BS in electrical engineering. After not finding an interesting engineering position, he decided to enter commercial airline pilot training. Part way through that training, he received an offer from Boeing to come to Seattle as an engineer working on the 747 program.While working at Boeing, Dado was given the opportunity to take a paid leave and attend the University of Washington. He ended up transferring to Stanford and moving to Silicon Valley in 1971. Upon graduating with a PhD, he went to National Semiconductor. Three years later he went to Commodore, and then onto Intersil, where he was the microprocessor design manager. From there it was on to Synertek and then SEEQ. While at SEEQ, he formulated ideas for his own startup, Mostron, to develop a PC chipset. Mostron ran out of money, but the chipset became the heart of his next startup, Chips and Technologies with Gordon Campbell. After driving his division to $450M, he left to start S3 in 1989 where he developed the first graphics accelerator for the PC.
Dado’s next step was to become a venture capitalist. After a stint at Mayfield, he started his own firm, Tallwood, where he continues to invest in companies with unique technologies.
Date
2013-08-15Contributor
| Banatao, Diosdado, Interviewee |
| Dennis, Eric, Media Producer |
| Kapoor, Uday, Interviewer |
